I have been moved by the response by party members to my decision to run for the Labour leadership. MPs who have actually consulted their constituents have discovered that they want me in the race because they want a genuine debate about the future of the Labour Party.
This leadership election comes at a pivotal time for the future of our party. It is not a leadership election conducted in the looming shadow of an incumbent. The discussions we will be having and the decisions we make will not be about a single personality but about the shape of the labour movement in the 21st century.
One of the most important issues is reviving internal party democracy. There is no doubt that if internal democracy had not been allowed to wither away under New Labour and if members had had a voice, not only would we have a much more vibrant party, but our Labour Government would have avoided some of its more obvious blunders. If our Government had been listening to the grassroots, we would not have raised pensions by a provocatively tiny eight pence, thus causing unnecessary offence to millions of pensioners. We would not have done away with the 10 pence tax rate. Above all we would not have gone into the illegal war with Iraq. I was there on the huge demonstration against it in 2003. It was the biggest march ever in central London. Thousands of Labour supporters were on that march. If we had enjoyed genuine party democracy at that time, the Labour Government would never have followed George Bush to war and we would have avoided, not only an illegal war, but the one action by the Labour Government that caused more disillusionment among our supporters than any other single issue.
Reviving party democracy is the right thing to do, but there also a series of pragmatic reasons to do this. All the front-runners for the leadership are very nice men. They would all make good leaders. But you cannot help noticing how similar they are. They all came up together as political advisors under New Labour (and used to play football together) and politically there are no serious differences between them. But one of the reasons that we have such a narrow choice of candidates to choose from is that the internal democratic structures of the party, which once provided a ladder for talented people of all backgrounds and from all wings of the party, have been allowed to wither away.
Immigration has been raised by all the frontrunners as the reason we lost the general election. But scapegoating immigrants in the middle of the recession is a very dangerous road to go down. There is no doubt that immigration is mentioned in much opinion polling and on many doorsteps as a cause of working-class discontent. However, it is worth remembering that immigration has been a cause of working-class angst since the 1970s and earlier – the Smethwick by-election and the winning Tory candidate’s slogan: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour”.
But it is significant that the more immigrants there are in an area and the longer they have actually been there, the less likely voters are to raise the issue on the doorsteps. It was never raised with me in Hackney. But, in lilywhite areas of Lancashire, the voters spoke of nothing else. I believe that immigration is a proxy for underlying working-class (black and white) disillusion and insecurity. What the labour movement needs to do is to address the underlying reasons for that unhappiness. There are many reasons why (black and white) working-class people grumble about more recent immigrants. Chief among these is New Labour’s ideologically-driven insistence that the market could somehow provide housing for all, when we should have been promoting a building drive of high-quality, well-managed public sector housing. Above all, we need to address job insecurity, the rise of the agency worker and the way in which New Labour chipped away at the welfare state in the name of “choice” which left working people increasingly insecure about their future.
There are a whole series of issues that I want to raise in the leadership debates which will not get raised unless I am on the ballot. Why have we allowed the Tories to capture the issue of civil liberties from us? Why can’t we we discuss the future of Trident? Why is it assumed that the only way to get out of the country’s current economic plight is massive public sector cuts? What about taxing the financial services industry and higher-rate taxpayers?
This leadership election ought to be a showcase for the modern Labour Party and actually enthuse the public. And it ought to embrace all wings of the party. If the current front-runners are the only contenders, it will be a less lively debate and less true to the breadth of opinion inside the party. So that is why I am standing in this election.
